Structure of an EDI Message

Sample EDI Message in ANSI X12 Format:

An EDI message (in ANSI X12 format) starts with an "envelope". The envelope begins with an Interchange Control segment ("ISA") and a Functional Group segment ("FG"). These contain sender, receiver, transaction type, and date of transmission amongst other details. Then we see one or more Transaction Sets ("ST") which contain the segments for individual business transactions like orders, shipments, etc.

Each header segment is accompanied by corresponding trailers. (ISA -> IEA, GS -> GE, ST -> SE) An EDI envelope can contain only one interchange control, but may contain multiple Functional Groups, and each Functional Group can contain many Transaction Sets.

Each EDI has a standard structure (X12 or EDIFACT or ODETTE) which it must adhere to in order to be a valid EDI.

Platform parses an EDI and validates it against the standard format to verify adherence to the standard format. If an EDI is found to conform to the standard format, then it is passed on to a specified interface to further process the data within the EDI. For example, an inbound EID 850 is converted to a PurchaseOrder.